Mama Lu Dumpling House in Monterey Park worth the wait

MAMA LU DUMPLING HOUSE

Rating: 3 stars

Where: 501 Garvey Ave., Monterey Park; 626 282-2256

When: Lunch and dinner, every day.

The Food: One of the biggest and busiest dumpling shops in the San Gabriel Valley, almost always packed with large tables of extended families inhaling a good selection of dumplings and noodles, along with an expected menu of chicken, beef, lamb, seafood and vegetable dishes. Go very hungry.

How Much: About $12 per person. MC, V.

Beverages: Soft drinks and tea.

Reservations: Not accepted.

The request came from an old friend in Malibu: “My kids want to go some place they’ve never been before. They want an adventure. Where can you take us?”

The answer is, always, easy. We rendezvous. And then, in a couple of vans, we head for the western-most enclave of Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley, which has been the place to go for three decades now. Though it’s not nearly as undiscovered by Anglos as it used to be, the chances are still good that it will be a journey into an alternative universe: a bit of Hong Kong on the streets of Monterey Park, Alhambra, Rosemead, Temple City and San Gabriel.

The area keeps growing, constantly expanding east and north, and a bit of south as well. If you’re a regular on Valley Boulevard, Atlantic Boulevard or Garvey Avenue, you know that if you’re away for just a couple of weeks, the culinary landscape will shift. Old names will vanish, replaced by shiny new signs. Sometimes the restaurant changes, but the sign doesn’t. Why waste money on a new sign, when your clients all know there’s been a change?

For this evening, a warm Saturday, I chose the much-loved Mama Lu Dumpling House. The Monterey Park spot a far more spacious eatery than most dumpling houses, which I assumed meant that even though Mama Lu doesn’t take reservations, getting in should be a cakewalk. I was wrong.

There were maybe 30 people waiting for tables. And tables weren’t just taken, they were taken by large groups of people who were ordering large amounts of food, which were flying out of the kitchen with crazy speed. Looking around, it seemed as if all those large groups had just gotten started. None of the tables had that picked-over look of a group about to box it up, and beat feet. They were only beginning to tuck in.

So we waited outside, watching a martial arts practice in an adjacent storefront, going across the street to buy some lottery tickets and wishing we had brought along a bottle of wine to sip from plastic cups. (Mama Lu doesn’t have a liquor license, and doesn’t allow anyone to bring their own.)

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We waited. And we waited, gazing hungrily at every departing party. But finally, after nearly an hour, our number was called.

It’s amazing how easy it is to forget the bother of the wait, once you sit down for if you’re a good eater, your focus isn’t on the past minutes — it’s on those yet to come. As I always do, I had worked up the skeleton of a menu for the table; to hand 10 menus to 10 diners in a Chinese restaurant is to invite utter chaos (a meal with no balance and three orders of the same dish you really don’t want). I let the table know if there was anything else they wanted, they should order it. But since I ordered at least a third more than we needed, the suggestion was moot. Our waiter told us we were ordering too much food. I told him not to worry about it; dumplings taste really good the next day.

There are 15 dumplings on the menu at Mama Lu, along with 13 noodle dishes, which is pretty standard for a San Gabriel Valley dumpling and noodle house. But there are also sizable sections of beef and lamb, chicken and seafood, bean curd and veggies, soups and rice dishes. In other words, Mama Lu Dumpling House isn’t just a dumpling house; it’s a full-dress Chinese restaurant.

But mostly, I was there for the dumplings. Especially for the soup dumplings (xiao long bao), which are indicated on the menu by the word “juicy.” And they are. There are juicy pork dumplings and juicy pork and crab dumplings. Unlike the famous ones served at Din Tai Fung, they’re not free-standing dumplings. Instead, they come in tiny individual aluminum pie pans, which keep them from leaking.

Bite into one too soon, and a blast of super-heated liquid will gush into your mouth. Open the dumpling a bit on the top, and sip the soup, and all will be well. Or just wait a bit, until they cool.